So here's the deal. We've been fortunate enough to have a few of
these little electrograms roll by without opening the doors of the
Hell Plaza Octoplex. Well, we're going to do things backwards this
time out. You see, I've got some thoughts on this here new Star
Wars opus and they're none too kind. Now I suppose I
could just do a regular old Electric Theatre and recommend something
up front, then work on down the Octoplex. But there's this big ole
white elephant in the room and it might be a little awkward to
ignore it.

So no A-Picture this week. Not that there aren't some fine movies
for your viewing pleasure a little further down. But first, let's
talk turkey. Things might get a little rough but don't worry. When
it's all over I'll hold you like I did by the lake on Naboo.

Now
Playing at the Hell Plaza Octoplex - Star Wars: Episode III -
Revenge of the Sith

OK, call me a hater. Call me a cynic. Call me the boy who could not
love and forgot how to dream. Whatever, man. Episode
III blows.

To put this into some kind of context for you, Episode
II merely sucked whereas Episode
I is one of those rare films that both sucks and blows.
In comparison to these films, Return of
the Jedi (and no, not Episode
VI... never Episode VI)
is a masterpiece. Yet compared to Star
Wars and The Empire Strikes
Back, Jedi itself
kinda sucks. Funny how these things work.

I'm going to operate under the assumption that if you have any
serious interest in seeing Revenge of the
Sith, you've already done so. If you haven't and don't
want my snide remarks poisoning your mind, feel free to skip this
whole thing. For the rest of you... look. I swear to god I went into
this with an open mind and low expectations. I really, really wanted
to like this movie and went in ready to compare it solely to the
other two prequels. Forget comparing it to the original trilogy or
even to regular movies. I figured that basically anything had to be
pretty good compared to The Phantom
Menace and Attack of the
Clones. Right?

And for at least a few minutes, I was cautiously optimistic. The
opening battle scene, while it didn't conjure any fond memories of
Star Wars at least conjured
fond memories of Star Tours at
Disneyland. Unfortunately, that feeling lasted less than five
minutes. The second that sequence is over, we're catapulted into the
next whirligig action scene. And within the first sixty seconds of
it, we've seen half a dozen things that are impossible. Not
unlikely. Not improbable. Physically impossible. Science has never
been the strong suit of these movies but come on. I can sooner
accept that Han and Leia can leave the Millennium Falcon with no
more protection than an oxygen mask strapped over their nose and
mouth than I can accept that octogenarian Christopher Lee can do
backflips. Once it's been established in these opening minutes that
anybody can do anything without getting hurt or even tired, I lost
interest. George Lucas has just removed the concepts of jeopardy and
consequences from the equation and drama just ain't dramatic without
'em.

Even the folks who like this movie are willing to concede that the
performances are a little wooden and the dialogue a little stiff. A
little? I've heard better dialogue and more emotional line readings
on an episode of Superfriends.
And poor Hayden Christensen is constantly being singled out for his
performance in this movie. I'm going to go on record right now and
say Hayden Christensen is a fine actor. Check out Shattered
Glass if you don't believe me. His bad performance here
is not his fault. It's the direction or lack thereof. How else do
you explain that Samuel Jackson, usually considered a pretty good
actor, gives one of the worst performances of all time in this
movie? His fight with the Emperor or Darth Sidious or Palpatine or
whatever the hell Lucas was calling that character that day? My
friends and I had more realistic death struggles when we played Star
Wars when we were nine years old. The only actor who
comes across at all well is Ewan MacGregor, partly because he was
probably drunk through most of the filming but also because all he
really had to do was imitate Alec Guinness. He does that well and
has from the beginning of this misbegotten trilogy.

Then there's those big and mighty action scenes, all
computer-fabulous and ready to rock. These things are so absurdly
busy, they literally give me a headache. And who knows what's going
on in half of these scenes? In the original trilogy, we had action
scenes with clearly defined objectives, a beginning, a middle and an
end. In The Empire Strikes Back,
the bad guys discover the good guys on the ice planet. The bad guys
attack. The good guys fight back to buy some time to get the hell
off the ice planet. It's very exciting and you can actually figure
out where people are and why they're doing what they're doing. In
Sith, Yoda lands on the Wookie
planet and within thirty seconds, all hell has broken loose. Then we
cut away from it and don't ever really go back to it for any length
of time. Are we supposed to care? Are we supposed to be excited by
any of that? Or are we just supposed to register the fact that
Lucasfilm's computers can render a ton of shit?

Now the news isn't all grim in this movie. There's maybe fifteen to
twenty minutes of stuff that I genuinely enjoyed. I thought Cartoon
Yoda looked a lot better in this installment than he did in the last
one. At least it seemed like the real people were actually looking
at him this time instead of just to his left or right. I thought the
fight between Yoda and the Emperor in the Senate room was pretty
cool, though that may have just been surprise that the room that was
the scene of the most boring, god-awful scenes in the previous
movies was finally being put to good use. And that final battle
between Obi-Wan and Anakin... well, I liked the beginning and the
end of it. All that stuff in between where they're doing everything
except throwing lavaballs at each other was a bit much. In fact,
there was enough raw footage in Sith
that I liked to make me wonder if it would be possible to take all
three prequels, redub them and edit them down to one good movie.

So Star Wars is over or at
least, I sincerely hope it is. The main reasons I've outlined here
are why I think Revenge of the Sith
is simply a bad movie. I'm not even going to go into why it's
disappointing as a Star Wars
movie (but believe me, I've got a dossier full of some of the
nerdiest reasons you can imagine). But I know a lot of folks have
really enjoyed Revenge of the Sith
and if you're one of 'em, I'm happy for you. I was (and on some
levels, still am) a huge fan of Star Wars,
The Empire Strikes Back and
Return of the Jedi and I wish
I could have enjoyed the prequels at all, much less at that same
level. If you do, great. But you'll never be able to persuade me
that the bottle of sparkling cider you're drinking from is Dom
Perignon. (**)

Crash

And now for something completely different. Crash
is the directorial debut of Million
Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis and the latest in a
long, long line of movies depicting Los Angeles as a hellish melting
pot of racial tensions on the verge of exploding. The good news is
that Crash is better than some
films of its type. The bad news is that you've probably seen
something very much like this before. For the first half hour or so,
I had a sinking feeling in my chest that I was in for Grand
Canyon, Part II (for the record, I really hate Grand
Canyon). But eventually, Crash's
all-star ensemble of characters stops delivering speeches about race
relations and the story itself kicks in. Once the movie relaxes into
itself, Crash is actually
quite good, although it's an easier movie to admire than to really
embrace. None of the characters are all that sympathetic, many of
them are downright awful, and even those who you do like end up
making bad decisions. The large cast is quite good, especially those
who are playing the least likable characters (including Sandra
Bullock as a flinty desperate housewife). Top acting honors,
however, go to Terrence Howard as a TV director numbed by the casual
racism he experiences every single day. Crash
is one of those movies like David Mamet's Oleanna
which is clearly designed to do nothing other than provoke post-show
discussion. At its worst (which is unfortunately early on), it seems
more like a social studies project than a movie. But at its best,
the discussions the film is trying to provoke are worth considering.
(***)

Dominion: Prequel to The
Exorcist

It's the movie so nice, they made it twice! A while back, Morgan
Creek Productions decided to give turning The
Exorcist into a franchise one more time (never mind the
fact that previous attempts to do so had not exactly set the world
on fire). My interest was piqued when Paul Schrader, author of Taxi
Driver and director of such films as Auto
Focus, was hired to do the job. Well, the studio hated
the movie Schrader turned in, fired his ass, and hired Danish hack
Renny Harlin for a do-over which became the execrable Exorcist:
The Beginning. Now, thanks no doubt to some fine print in
Schrader's contract, his version has been released. And while I'd
love to say it's a masterpiece... really, it still isn't very good.
Don't get me wrong. It's much, much, much better than Harlin's
crapfest. The movie makes more sense now and at least it's
interesting, which is way more than you could say for the other one.
But Dominion is most
fascinating as a compare-and-contrast with Exorcist:
The Beginning. It's a bizarre look into the studio
mindset because you can tell exactly what the studio didn't like and
wanted changed. As a movie unto itself, Dominion
is an interesting failure. As an object lesson for aspiring
filmmakers, both movies should be taught in film schools from now
on. (** ½)

Fairy Tale: A True Story

Here's a nice little surprise: a gentle, sweet movie from 1997 that
casually and effortlessly evokes the same feelings Finding
Neverland labored so hard to summon. The year is 1917 and
two young cousins snap some photographs of honest-to-goodness
fairies in their back garden. The best experts in England can't
disprove the authenticity of the pictures and the girls become a
nationwide phenomenon, attracting the attention of such luminaries
as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole who, as usual, commands the
screen just by looking into the camera) and debunker Harry Houdini
(Harvey Keitel). There is no more appropriate word for this movie
than "charming". Fairy Tale
sweeps you along with lovely period detail, fine performances
(especially by the two lead girls) and a simple faith in magic. If I
ever do one of those "best movies you probably haven't seen or
heard of" books, expect this to be in the family section.
(*** ½)

The Great Rock 'N' Roll
Swindle

This, on the other hand, probably won't be in that book and
certainly not in the family section. The Sex Pistols' movie is
finally out on DVD and it's pretty much as big a mess as I
remembered. It's a hodgepodge of documentary footage, live concert
performances, animation and staged antics with manager Malcolm
McLaren outlining his ten rules for making the band. There is some
terrific stuff, including performances of "Pretty Vacant"
and Sid Vicious doing "My Way". But a little of McLaren
goes a long way. You're much better off with the more objective (and
infinitely more coherent) documentary The
Filth and the Fury, also directed by Swindle
director Julien Temple. (** ½)

Mad Love

Originally called Joan the Mad
in its native country of Spain (a much more interesting title, I
think), Mad Love tells the
true story of the Castilian queen who was imprisoned for more than
half a century after her husband, Philip, and court had her declared
mad. The film posits that Joan was simply crazy in love with Philip
and jealous over his inveterate womanizing. Directed by Vicente
Aranda, Mad Love is kind of a
snooze dramatically and nowhere near as good as Elizabeth
or Queen Margot (the two
movies it's compared to in the trailer and why I was conned into
watching this in the first place). However, it is visually
spectacular. If you're really interested in lighting and
cinematography, it's almost worth watching for that reason alone.
Almost. (**)

National Treasure

If you were concerned that Nicolas Cage was going to turn into a
serious actor again after Adaptation.
a couple years back, don't worry. He's once again back toplining the
goofiest of goofball action epics. This time, he's treasure hunter
Benjamin Franklin Gates, whose family legacy is a quest for untold
riches buried by our founding fathers back in 1776. But because
treasures are no fun if they're underground, they left clues all
over the place in the forms of word games, puzzles, and sixth grade
American history. This movie is patently ridiculous and impossible
to take seriously on any level. I was disappointed that Cage's
character was relatively tic-free this time out, robbing me of my
one guaranteed piece of entertainment in movies like these. Some of
this is kind of fun, I guess, but it disappeared from my memory
almost while I was watching the film. However, the actor playing the
janitor toward the end of the film is brilliant. I hope National
Treasure II focuses on him exclusively.
(**)

Sands of Iwo Jima

What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than with a good
old-fashioned World War II flag-waver? John Wayne plays Stryker, a
tough-as-railroad-spikes sergeant whipping a new platoon into shape
in the Pacific Theatre. Even if you've never seen a WW2 movie
before, if you know the clichés, then you know this movie.
Sands of Iwo Jima wasn't the
first movie of its type but it follows the template religiously. You
could set your watch by the beats of this movie but that's OK. The
Duke's in fine form, whether he's barking orders at his Marines or
showing his softer side when he discovers a dance hall girl is
hiding her baby in the next room. The battle scenes incorporate some
actual combat footage, lending the climactic Iwo Jima sequence some
dramatic heft. Not the best movie of its kind but certainly
enjoyable. (***)

That'll do it for this week. Over at The
Digital Bits, it's a biopic-o-rama in
The
Bottom Shelf with new reviews up for The
Aviator, Kinsey and
Ed Wood. Check 'em out and
I'll see you all here again in a fortnight. May the Force be with
you.